Ocean Vuong says in an interview—sent to me by my peer therapist—that he wrote his latest book because he wanted to examine the idea of “kindness without hope.” Why do humans help others when they cannot personally benefit? The phrase stuck with me. That’s kind of my whole deal.
I’m just trying to be kind. I also live my life without hope.
I don’t have hope politically. The world seems intent on trying out fascism. Historically, it takes a generation to flush a fascism. The things is, I only get the one generation.
I don’t have hope that the earth will be habitable by next generation. Maybe by the end of mine.
I don’t have hope that media will be a viable career for the next 28 years and two months, the length of my mortgage.
And, worst of all, six months into a breakup, I don’t have hope anyone will ever want to smooch me again.
Later, I listened to an Anohni interview about her song 4 Degrees. It’s from an album called Hopelessness, so the interviewer asks about that word. She says that hopelessness is a feeling, a sensation you experience in the body, but that it doesn’t excuse you from the table. You still have to show up and do the work.
That resonated with me as well. It’s a cool idea, noble perhaps: Even losing ventures are worth doing. But it left me feeling exhausted. It’s hard to find the motivation, waking up day after day to toil away, when you don’t really have faith that things will get any better. It’s grueling, and I’m tired.
A few months later, I listened to Ross Gay’s poem A Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. In it, he spends 15 minutes preening about all the delights of the world. “I want so badly to rub the sponge of gratitude over every last thing,” he says. The poem ends with a conversation between Ross Gay and an unborn child.
Soon it will be over,
which is precisely what the child in my dream said,
holding my hand, pointing at the roiling sea and the sky
hurtling our way like so many buffalo,
who said it’s much worse than we think,
and sooner; to whom I said
no duh child in my dreams, what do you think
this singing and shuddering is,
what this screaming and reaching and dancing
and crying is, other than loving
what every second goes away?
Goodbye, I mean to say.
And thank you. Every day.
Loving, what every second goes away. In this way, gratitude is not necessarily an antidote to hopelessness, but a companion. Holding hands at the end of the world.
I babysat my ex’s kid a few years ago. At the time, he was maybe 9, addicted to pixels. When he’d finally done all his chores and was allowed to watch YouTube, he asked me how long he had. Half an hour, I dutifully informed him. He threw a fit. Like actual crying and yelling, because it wasn’t long enough. He was self-aware enough to know that half an hour would feel like nothing while he was zoned out, and was pre-grieving the end of his TV time. I remember feeling smug and superior. Here was this child, upset about the end of something before it had even begun, before he could enjoy and appreciate it.
I don’t feel so smug anymore. I do the same thing—pre-grieve what I will one day lose, but haven’t lost yet.
So now, I’m trying to shift toward gratitude, enjoying with abandon what I have, while I have it.
My friend Rachel once wrote a gorgeous essay called How Do You Love What You May Soon Lose? I think the answer is: Ferociously. As much as you can, while you still can.
